The Radio Festival
I've been enjoying a heat-wave in Cambridge since Monday afternoon, attending the annual . It's a good chance to catch up on all the issues facing the industry and hear the view of people from commercial radio as well as my own bosses and colleagues at the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú.
I even met up with fellow blogger, William Crawley, who presents programmes for Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Ulster. He was boasting about his page impressions in a most undignified way. Sadly I did not have any facts at my disposal about the number of kindly souls who read this diary so naturally I just made them up.
The festival had many highlights including a very funny speech from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's top man, Mark Thompson in which he laughed off the attacks from commercial radio by admitting that he was, indeed, Dr Evil and sat in a large chair in Broadcasting House stroking a white cat and sending his henchmen out to destroy his rivals. He joked that many of the senior executives in the commercial sector were double agents who are "working for us".
The following day we heard programme controllers from Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú and commercial station reveal the secrets of their success . Paul Cooney, from Radio Clyde, made reference to "a resurgent Radio Scotland" when he talked about the competitive market, but he also took a swipe at the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú for paying too much for football commentary rights. He told the audience that Scotish football wasn't worth the money and there were many nods of agreement.
There was an inspiring session led by Mathew Bannister who talked about the importance of risk-taking and creativity and quoted everyone from Shakespeare to e.e. cummings. He gave us the behind the scenes story of his dealings with Chris Morris and recounted the uproar that ensued when Morris had gone on air with a spoof obituary of Michael Heseltine.
This had been my first ever visit to Cambridge and most of the festival delegates were staying in the small rooms usually occupied by undergraduates. Frankly I've seen more luxurious prison cells. But the town itself is simpy beautiful, with dreaming spires, punts on the river and everything you expect from the guide books.
The number of cyclists makes every foot-journey an adventure. Today we saw one elderly cyclist knocked on to the road as a group of Japanese tourists backed on to the road in their attempts to take photographs of the famous Mathematical bridge.
I wont tell you want the man said as be got back to his feet. It was lost in translation.
